Once your photogrammetry has finished processing in Terrain Creator, you'll need to transfer your drone data to the Virtual Surveyor app to begin the actual survey work. You have two options:


Survey a Single Moment in Time: Use the Open in Virtual Surveyor button to survey a single moment in time for a specific area. 

Open in Virtual Surveyor button in the Terrain Creator app ribbon.


Compare Surveys Over Time: Select the To Existing button to add an additional dataset of an area you’ve previously surveyed in order to compare changes over time.

To Existing button in the Terrain Creator app ribbon.


Overview


Start Your Survey

After you click on the Open in Virtual Surveyor button, your project will open in the Virtual Surveyor app and you can create your survey on a dataset for the moment in time the drone was flown. The project will have the same file name as the one you used in Terrain Creator and the date of the drone data is automatically added as the name of the Timestep in the Timeline.

Use the Open in Virtual Surveyor button to move the processed drone data into Virtual Surveyor as .ei (DSM) and .ii (Orthomosaic) files.


Start your survey. With your project open in the Virtual Surveyor app, you are now ready start work and create your survey. 


Accessing data files. You can access your data files using the Terrain Files button, or by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+E while in the Terrain Creator app.

Terrain Files button in the Terrain Creator app ribbon.


Examples of surveys for a single moment in time: 


Compare Surveys Over Time

You can create a timeline of datasets captured over the same area on different dates or different moments in time, making it easy to track changes across surveys. If you have a previous project open in Virtual Surveyor from an earlier moment in time, you can use the To Existing button to transfer the latest DSM and Orthophoto from Terrain Creator adding them as the most recent dataset. 


Compare over time. Once transferred, the new drone dataset merges into the Timeline as a new Timestep, named after the drone flight date. Each dataset added from Terrain Creator becomes a new moment in time, allowing you to compare changes with previous Timesteps directly within Virtual Surveyor.

Use To Existing (button name changes depending on what project is open in the Virtual Surveyor app) to create a new Terrain State for an open project in Virtual Surveyor.


Note: In the Virtual Surveyor app, you will see your Elevation and Image Terrain files are shown in the Layers panel under No Layer. 


Examples of projects you can compare over time: